long road
by yamiangie
Summary: From the past to the present Duel Monsters is game that transcends generations


Yusei sighed then wheeled the Duel Runner its starting position. The crowd was nothing but white noise filtering though his helmet. He'd finally made it to this match with Jack it had been a long road.

In the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt young prince hides in large vase. He hasn't done this in ages; silently he hopes his tutors don't think he'd so something so unroyal and childish. He holds his breath as he hears voices approaching. He recognizes one has his father the pharaoh, the other the new high priest that had inherited the ring.

Yugi Muto is rummaging through the dusty store room of his grandfather's game shop. It's mostly boxes of dice, packages of trading cards and, low grade model kits from shows five years older than himself. Something that is not a Bandi mode of the Arcadia is at the back of highest self he can get to. Covered in dust not to mention in need of a good polish is a golden engraved metal box. It was kind of neat looking he thought staring at it. He'd have to ask his grandfather what it was later when he asked him for one of the Arcadia models.

She looks at the young prince she's sworn to protect for eternity. His big brown eyes look up at her in wonder. She's the coolest thing he's ever seen in his life he doesn't know to find fear in what she has become. It's that optimism and innocence she loves she never wants to see a tear in those large round eyes. She doesn't regret undergoing the ritual now. She does wonder why the lavender haired man in the purple cloths and funny hat keeps looking at her in face palming.

The kid he's tormented since the first day of class is defending him. Victims can go to great lengths to rationalize what's being done to him but this was stretching it. Ushio didn't really care about who he beat the tar out of or how badly. Sure he considered himself a punk and a bully but he was a punk with a moral self code. Right now that code was telling him he owed Yugi, he just wished the school pool wasn't so deep.

No one talks about the Domino City used to be before the quake. As if the only way to live in the now was to pretended the Satellite always existed and never dwell on what had been. Rally finds it hard to believe trains used to run in the tunnels Yusei uses to test his runner. He's manning the stopwatch for time trials. It's the only way he can help; the gang would flip if he brought home any more stolen parts. He doesn't get why no one tried to rebuild here like they did on the mainland. It just like with Jack no one wants to talk about what they used to have and what they lost.

Jaden doesn't mind being along in the red dorm with the cat and the little spirit ball said cat kept eating. The thing on his mind was why he bothered to come back and how he had not managed to get kicked out for having not gone to a single class since the term started. It was all going to be so easy when he first applied. Use his amazing skills and deck to become top duelist at the academy and he was a shoe in for the pro leagues at graduation. No cram schools, no boring life as a salary man, it was supposed to be the fast track to fame and fortune. They had just never said anything about, magic, duel spirits, alternate dimensions, crazy ex girlfriends from past lives or past lives in general, or math. Really the idea of printing circuits onto the card backs was to eliminate the math part. He wondered if Yugi Muto had the deal with all this.

The helicopter ride to the island seemed longer than he remembers. Why I2 founder wanted to talk him at a somewhat remote privet island and not that their business meeting yesterday was beyond him. The American acted way to causal with the guy he had tried to have done away with in order to get his hands on hard light hologram tech. Pegasus most likely had a good reason, one which knowing him fell into the see it to believe category of justification. One thing was for sure Pegasus was going to lose his remaining good eye if this was to show off his newest addition to his manga collection.

Pegasus was

The Closest to Duel Academy when it vanished off the face of the earth.

His Duelist kingdom estate had included the island Duel Academy was built on when he had originally purchased it years ago.

The person with knowledge in shadow magic that wasn't in Egypt or god knew where else traveling the world.

Though most magic related to duel monsters involved invoking the properties of that other realm into the one the summoner normal occupied not vice versa. At the same time it was still shadow magic that had accomplished this. While he had lost the right to wield the millennium eye, the experience had sensitive to when it was being extensively used. The shock of picking up the backlash engery from the portal had caused him to fall out of the intertube he been relaxing in.

Exactly why Geko corp was there already or their security staff was harassing the school's Chancellor beyond him. Sheppard was just wasn't very good at being aware of things that possibly would cause disaster. He gave Kaiba credit for somehow keeping DA running semester after semester with everything that kept happening. If Kaiba Corp. wasn't top notch at information control the school would have been shut down long ago.

In fact there was talk of a Duel University being founded. While he felt nothing but pride at how far Duel monsters had brought the world of collectable card games its origins still cast a dark shadow over the game. The level of occult skill was frightening at the high school level judging by this latest emergency. They'd be trying to forge new millennium items at the doctorate level. Maybe he could convince Kaiba to set it up in the middle of some place remote like where the his government first conducted nuclear testing. Not that it would greatly matter what ever was happening now it was still going to come down to him to straighten things out.

The idea had come from an old duel Academy legend. The energy harnessed by people dueling had been used to open the veil between worlds. They'd perfected wireless energy transmission. If they could in effect wirelessly collect energy expended by duelist both professional and casual they'd make a major impact on the energy crisis. The generator and converters just worked to well. He hoped his son was out of the estimated blast zone by time it all blew up in his face. It didn't make sense something must have interfered with the test. At this point the overloud was going to conservatively destroy half of Domino city.

He didn't know what he found more annoying¸ that freak thinking that he could play mind games with him, or that he could out duel a legend like Kaiba. The man had tried to pass himself off as Mokuba and bring out the worst of their past. Kaiba had not been convinced from the start knowing fully that his brother was not even in the country. Trueman clearly had not done his research and had been quickly obliterated under the onslaught of his Blue Eyes White Dragons. After his opponent had vanished he had packed up to work from home. All of his employees seemed to have vanished without a trace and there was still Duel Disk software to debug, again. Opening a Duel Academy had seemed like such a good idea at the time.

The tricky part of being a satellite duelist was getting your hands on working tech. Most of the Duel disks where old second generation models, as such they had their share of problems. The most prominent being terrible battery life, worn out moving parts needing to be replaced, and limited deck and grave yard space. Not to mention walking around with on was an open invitation to get jumped by duel gangs. They were on the other hand easy to modify, such as for Duel Runner use. That provided Yusei with the problem of getting together the parts to build a motorbike from scratch, again. Well at least this time he knew what he was doing from the get go.

As heart breaking as it was to lose his other self, losing the puzzle was just adding insult to injury. It was going to be a memento of his grandfather and something to remember the Pharaoh by. It also represented the massive amount of time and heart that went into solving it. Like putting together a Master Grade Char Zaku only to realize the paint you used had eaten up the plastic. It was Joey's analogy not his. Still without the puzzle he could swear he saw the Dark Magician smile and salute him when summoned. The magic wasn't gone just the tools for fine control were gone. The Egyptians weren't the first to tap into shadow magic and where were most likely not going to be the last. Now what to do with that Kuriboh card that kept glom _ouch_ … what the hell had just hit him at mock 9?

Yusei kept his face neutral as Runner came up to speed on the track. He couldn't help feeling a tiny bit excited for the duel. It wasn't every day you dueled for the title of King, not that he cared about that part. It had been a long time coming but finally it was time to duel.


End file.
